Mark Creelman (Place Executive - Merton and Wandsworth) introduced the paper which had been circulated to members.

The Integrated Care Partnership (ICP) which was established on 1^st July, brings together Health, Social Care, Chairs from Health and Wellbeing Boards, the Voluntary Sector, Health Watch and numerous health colleague.

An aim of the ICP was to develop a strategy of the integrated care priorities across South West London which has been informed by a comprehensive needs assessment across the area.

The ICP started with the collection of views from residents. This was followed by a review of the Start Well, Live Well and Age Well domains which highlighted issues of mental health, early years in children and young people’s transition as well as prevention.

Through this the ICP now had four recommended priorities which were preventing ill health, promoting self-care and supporting people to manage long term conditions, supporting the health and care needs of children and young people as well as targeting mental health with community-based support for older and frail people. A fifth priority which had been highlighted as important was to tackle and reduce health inequalities.

Four workstreams had been identified including targeted action around difficult to recruit roles, to design a future workforce and to support local residents into employment.

In response to questions, the following was stated:

·       Primary and secondary care should work together more.  A lot of work in South West London and Merton had taken place to try and break down barriers between primary and secondary care. There was a opportunity to set out clearly which organisations and who was in the best position to do what, so that there was a clear plan for real action and progress.

·       Alongside the four priorities, a ‘fifth priority’ of tackling health inequalities should be reflected in all work.

·       The term integration means different things to different partners. Aligned to integration and breaking down barriers, there needs to be a focus on primary care - in its broadest sense, including general practice, extended NHS primary care (dentistry, pharmacy, optometry), community services and social care – working more closely with secondary care; building on existing strategic work focused on integration across SWL and Merton.

·       Integration is key to help deliver access, continuity of care (relational, informational, care coordination), improved population health outcomes addressing health inequalities and improved efficiency and sustainability. This takes time and effort but there are already good relationships in Merton.

·       A need to set out a delivery plan clearly describing which organisations, who, and how is going to contribute to the ICP priorities, to realise added value from a system approach. There is already lots of work going on that we need to build on and connect.

·       The Merton Partnership which includes other bodies such as the police and employment organisations could be a way to take this forward.

·       Support for the first annual priority around workforce, as health and care partners across the whole system struggle with recruitment and retention of the right staff with the right skills.  

·       Discussion about the additional importance of healthy workplace, creating the conditions for staff to stay healthy themselves. This can help with recruitment, increase population health in SWL, as many health and care staff are local residents, and better enable staff to promote and support residents and patients to stay healthy.

·       The importance of clear communication to partners and residents to help all to understand change and the developing workforce.

Every borough in South West London would be marked against the two-hour rapid response target. Merton have developed a ‘hospital at home’ service to help avoid people going into hospital in the first instance and then getting people out of hospital with a higher level of acuity.

Before Christmas the NHS issued guidance to ICB’s on Joint Forward Plans. The plans focussed on how the NHS organisations would work together to deliver health care to the population. As the first draft would be required in March and the final version required by June, the draft report could hopefully come back to the Health and Wellbeing Board in March.

RESOLVED: That the Board agreed the recommendations.